Underconstruction - Visual Dialogue: Talking About Identities in the Armenian Transnation

This output, shown during the Venice Bienalle fringe exhibition, culminated a year-long online collaboration amongst artists of Armenian descent

This visual exchange site enabled participants, all members of the Armenian diaspora, (1) to explore our own ‘Armenianness’, and (2) to develop a visual language that might transcend our different national and linguistic backgrounds. The Venice exhibition then served as a physical space to continue this investigation, and to compare virtual and in-person collaboration.

The invitation to participate enabled me to develop my work with narrative in a direction that had been interesting me for some time: the importance of story – especially personal history – in the construction of identity. Charlotte Linde’s studies of life stories and Mark Turner’s work on ‘the literary mind’ especially informed my contributions to the Underconstruction website, where I ‘told’ how my sense of dislocation is a strong part of my identity, using photographs inscribing myself into landscapes of places traveled to over the year.

My piece was a text-based installation, ‘An Intact and Secret Treasure’, and added sound piece. The text piece, draws on traditions of Russian Futurist artists’ books and Oulipo. Specifically, the work reproduces Jorge Luis Borges’ ‘The Library of Babel’ in the style of a ransom note, visually embodying the narrative and communicating visually my sense of the anxiety of knowledge presented by the author.

The soundpiece I added, ‘reSEARCH’, extends this in an aural interpretation of the story. Both approaches echo the investigations of Underconstruction itself, in their exploration of non-verbal languages.

Emily Artinian

Subject Area: Artists' books and text-based art

Current Research

1. Participating in http://www.underconstructionhome.net/, a visual dialogue amongst Diasporan Armenian artists spread around the globe, exploring issues of identity and transnationality. This culminates in a group show - the Alternative Armenian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2007.
2. Participation in the collaborative project REGENERATOR, organised by the Centre for Fine Print Research, Bristol. 60 participating artists are 'regenerating' books that have been withdrawn from the University of the West of England Library.
3. Founded http://www.thestreamingbook.com/, video interviews with artists working with the book form - the first, and as yet only, research project dedicated to giving book artists a platform online to clearly display and talk through their work in this time based, 3D medium, for which still imagery provides inadequate documentation.
4.Current studio practice is focussed on a new series of works investigating the neurobiology of visualising narrative.

• http://www.emilyartinian.com/
• http://www.underconstructionhome.net/